After bankruptcy, he was banned from sports betting sites. Then he found Kalshi

A Pennsylvania man who had racked up roughly $75,000 in credit-card and personal-loan debt and more than $50,000 from online sportsbooks filed for bankruptcy and self-excluded from DraftKings and FanDuel. Two years later he clicked a Kalshi ad offering a small cash bonus, quickly escalated bets, and blew through savings again, ending up about $25,000 in debt and dependent on family help. After repeatedly asking Kalshi to permanently close his account, he got automated responses about trading breaks, voluntary opt-outs and funding caps before the platform finally barred him; clinicians say his experience mirrors many relapses among people who had self-excluded from regulated sportsbooks.

Mental-health counselors and gambling-harm advocates argue that Kalshi and competitor Polymarket have become magnets for problem gamblers because they advertise aggressively nationwide, use celebrity and influencer marketing, plaster sports venues with branding, and operate under a federal “swap” classification that sidesteps state consumer-protection rules. Kalshi defends its exchange model, saying profits aren’t tied to trader losses, but clinicians and critics say the apps are gamified like sportsbooks and enable easy relapses, especially among young users. Trading volume has surged - to roughly $60 billion in a recent month versus $2.8 billion a year earlier - prompting regulatory challenges from states and the prospect of a high-stakes legal showdown.